In the field of this invention it is known that the ‘3GPP Standard’ (the evolving standard for UMTS--Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) allows user equipment--UE--(e.g., a mobile cellular telephone) to autonomously select the transport format combination (TFC). The transport format combinations available to the UE will typically represent different throughputs. Generally, the TFCs which are associated with higher throughputs require larger amounts of physical resources (i.e., more codes with lower spreading factors). The UE will be signalled with the transport format combination set (TFCS) which defines a number of TFCs. The ‘layer 1’ 410 (FIG. 4) processes (governing physical channel allocation and control) in the user equipment (UE) will determine the power required to support these TFCs (all the TFCs in the TFCS) and will decide which ones can be used and which require more power than is available and therefore cannot be used.
Layer 1 410 (FIG. 4) then signals the available TFCs to medium access control (MAC). MAC 415 (FIG. 4) then determines which of the available TFCs will be used.
When a dedicated channel (DCH) is allocated to a user, it is clearly not possible to reallocate physical resources that have been allocated to this user but are not used because of the selected TFC.
However, when shared channels are employed in the uplink it is beneficial to allocate only the necessary amount of physical resource (number and spreading factor of channelisation codes) that a UE can utilize. This is because the resources that could not be used can be reallocated to other users. In addition, when the UE can exploit more physical resources (use a higher TFC) it is advantageous to know this in order to provide the highest user throughputs.
Unfortunately, prior art systems do not allow these two techniques to be used.
A need therefore exists for the abovementioned disadvantage(s) to be alleviated.